Leave a Legacy

Kevin Spafford is Farm Journal’s succession planning expert for the Farm Journal Legacy Project.He hosts the nationally-televised ‘Leave a Legacy’ TV, facilitates an ongoing series of workshops for farm families across the U.S., and is the author of Legacy by Design: Succession Planning for Agribusiness Owners.

Strategic versus Operational Business Tactics

Planning for next year is on the to-do list of the Legacy Project and Legacy by Design. As I begin to look more deeply into the opportunities and obligations of our client relationships, it has become clear that there are two distinctive ways to look at business obligations/duties/responsibilities/actions: each has a strategic and an operational purpose.

Strategic actions may have high potential value, yet require a correspondingly high risk. A strategic action may have a large impact on revenue either in upfront costs and/or in resulting profits.

Operational actions, on the other hand, are merely methods of doing the things business is supposed to do. In the business planning process, we look for ways to do those things better/more efficiently.

All businesses work on both the strategic and operational facets. Operational actions may be likened to execution---how efficiently we do something. Strategic actions are designed to grow the operation, vertically or horizontally.